“Speaking of Courage” speaks of courage through a story that wouldn’t really be considered courageous yet having the “courage” to tell a story about a time you didn’t have it, is in fact “courage”. It explores the way that telling stories simultaneously recalls the pain of the war experience and allows soldiers to work through that pain after the war has ended. O’Brien and Bowker illustrate how speaking or not speaking about war experience affects characters. O’Brien and Bowker illustrate how speaking or not speaking about war experience affects characters. Through The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. The young men "carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place" (O'Brien 21). The soldiers did not go to war for glory or honor, but simply to avoid the "blush of dishonor" (21). In fact, O'Brien states "It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards." The soldiers went to war because they were too scared of being scolded by the entire country for being too much of a coward to fight for their nation. Some of the soldiers were such cowards that they injured themselves just to be taken away in a helicopter and extracted from the war scene. The soldiers "spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they'd say. Candy-asses" (22). However, deep down inside, the soldiers who did all the mocking "imagined...They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture”. It's interesting that the soldiers' potential cowardice is a "common secret." It's something they all have, and that they know they all have, and that they know they all know that they have (lost yet?) – but they still don't talk about it. Their fear of weakness, be it physical or moral, is their "heaviest burden," and it's always on their minds. Another example includes the dialogue Lee had with Dave after his injury regarding his life. "Oh, Jesus," he said, and moaned, and tried to slide away and said, "Jesus, man, don't kill me." Lee and Dave initially had a big tough-guy pact that if one of them ever got a wheelchair wound, the other would put him out of his misery. But when Strunk does get a wheelchair wound, he chickens out. Whether or not this should be considered weakness on his part is up for debate, though. On the one hand, Strunk sounds kind of pathetic and weak – he's swearing and moaning and begging. On the other, of course he sounds pathetic and weak. His leg just got blown off! And maybe choosing to live with the disability is the choice that shows strength. In conclusion, Tim O’Brien does a good job of conveying what is courageous and what is not (with a few exceptions).
